Abstract:
Controlling a robot swarm with a single remote controller is a challenging task, especially under unstable communication conditions where agents can temporarily lose the control signal, necessitating robust decentralized mechanisms for formation maintenance. This paper presents and tests a semi-centralized control system that enables an operator to coordinate the entire swarm as a unified entity. The system integrates centralized commands from a base station with decentralized position correction via the ESP-NOW protocol. To compare performance in maintaining a rigid formation, the Local Voting Protocol (LVP) and its Accelerated version (ALVP) were applied. Their effectiveness was evaluated in a simulation environment with a group of four drones through experiments involving sharp maneuvers (50$^\circ$ and 75$^\circ$ turns) and significant data packet loss simulations (50% and 80%). The results demonstrate that the Accelerated Local Voting Protocol (ALVP) offers significant advantages over the standard LVP, including faster formation recovery, lower mean positioning error, and greater stability. Specifically, in a series of 20 flight tests with a 50$^\circ$ turn, ALVP successfully maintained the formation in 17 cases, compared to only 3 for LVP, and also showed superior robustness under packet loss conditions. Therefore, the proposed semi-centralized approach using the ALVP protocol is an effective and robust solution for swarm formation control. Future work will focus on conducting physical experiments and integrating obstacle avoidance mechanisms.
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